FROM GESCHICHTEN TO GESCHICHTE: THE ORGANIC UNITY OF HISTORY

Semper's practical aesthetics presupposed a strict correspondence between style and its historical conditions of becoming, a correspondence he accused his contemporaries of having ignored to disastrous effect. This idea of correspondence rested on distinct assertions about history: about the way history is structured and about the way we can access this structure as a guide to the present. Semper's assertions were not original. They arose out of a rich German tradition for historical thinking that emerged in the second half of the eighteenth century and came to its full articulation in the nineteenth. One influential contribution to this tradition was Wilhelm von Humboldt's “Ueber die Aufgabe des Geschichtschreibers” (1822). Advising the historian about his task and how to conduct it, Humboldt boldly declared the historian's objective to be “the depiction of what takes place [Darstellung des Geschehenen]”. The self-evident ring of this statement is deceptive. For what is das Geschehene? In answering this question, Humboldt presented a key to nineteenth-century philosophy of history. The ‘stuff of history’ is not simply individual historical events, but rather what binds them together as an apparent unity. The essential task of the historian is to articulate this unity. “What has taken place … is only partially visible in the world of the senses”, Humboldt explained. “The remainder must be added through feeling, deduction, and conjecture.” Individual historical events must be grasped in their ‘inner, causal connections’.